Gladys Hunt

Hunt and Hampton talk about teaching teens how to choose the best books, and to not believe everything they read. They then say not to judge a book you haven't read. They never really delve into the fact that, as Christians, especially, we don't have to always read a book to know that it's not worth reading. Often, we can gather enough information from the title, author, ad-copy, table of contents, others' reviews, or maybe a quick skim through it to learn that a book will not bring glory to God and isn't worth our investment.

I was very disappointed to see a book recommended which the authors admit contains "explicitly sexual" content. They claim this pick is for the "most mature" of readers. I would argue that no teenager is the most mature of readers, and that a truly mature reader would be wise enough to abandon books with such content. As Christians, is any book worth reading that offends the Spirit of God in us?

Their answer to inappropriate content of any kind seems to be: "Skip over it." But that doesn't acknowledge the reality that in order to "skip" something while reading, you actually have to read it first, at least in part, in order to know that it needs to be skipped. Like it or not, that information is getting into your mind and we are always influenced by what we take in.

Despite the problems I have with the book, I did still manage to find over 30 books to add to my to-read list, and those will keep me plenty busy. (I only read the recommendations for Late Teens; there were others for Early- and Mid-Teens, and All Ages.)

Note: The authors give spoilers for some books, which is frustrating.… (meer)

I had high hopes for this book after my sister began reading it and said she really liked it. I was disappointed.

The format of the book was a little confusing to me. Hunt didn't seem to be able to pick out just one, so it is like a strange mix of telling readers the value of reading certain kinds of books, plus book lists that are not actually straight-up lists with descriptions.

I was very frustrated that she gave spoilers for a few books! My favorite part of reading is not knowing what's going to happen next. I had a book on my to-read list and now that I know how it ends, Hunt has taken all the joy out of my reading it.

Also, this book was written by a Christian and published by a Christian publishing house, so it kind of frustrated me to see books being recommended that have content in them that is objectionable to many Christians. She did at least put a note next to those ones, but with all the many books in the world, why not just omit these reads entirely?

She has one chapter covering genre fiction (all of it) and I thought the recommendations here were quite weak. Many of them were classics in their own right and so nearly everyone has already heard of them. In my opinion, one of the points of reading a book like this is to discover lesser known gems.

However, I liked the fact that this book was published in 2002, because it means there are no current "popular" books cluttering up the text, so I did still come across many books I'm interested in reading. Hunt includes over 800 titles in the book and there is probably something every reader could take away from this.… (meer)